The consumerisation of IT is the trend that reflects the demands of a new tech-savvy workforce, who expect to bring their devices into the workplace and connect to corporate services in a way that suits them. Historically this has not always been the case.

A decade ago, IT hardware provided by an employer was usually better than what was used at home. Over time however, falling prices in hardware manufacture and a push towards a digital world has meant that employees have found their personal IT has become more powerful, or preferable to that offered at work.

The benefits to employers in allowing this BYOD ecosystem to evolve can easily be seen; reduced hardware costs and greater flexibility for the employee will ultimately result in improved efficiency and job satisfaction.

In a recent corporate survey by Citrix Systems, they found that an overwhelming 92% of companies are allowing some of their employees to access and manage work related tasks on personal devices. This is a huge leap forward and shows that business is ready for the hybrid home/work future.

The survey also points out however that less than half (44%) of those companies have a formal BYOD plan in place to manage the use of personal technology. With such huge issues of security and loss of corporate information at stake, the time to think about how to make BYOD work for you is now.

Cloud is key

BYOD is becoming commonplace due, in part, to the rush to cloud-based infrastructure that we have seen in the last three to five years. Online storage, backup and collaboration is no longer in the hands of the rich and technologically advanced – consumer apps such as Google Docs, Dropbox and Crashplan have brought innovations that only a few years ago would have cost thousands, down to a price accessible to all.

Alys Woodward, business analytics, collaboration and social platforms analyst for International Data Corporation in Europe, defines consumerisation as "the trend that sees new IT technology emerging first in the consumer market and then spreading into business organisations. The rise of the social web is now driving increased use of enterprise collaboration applications."

So with the cloud in our homes, it is only right that it should be in our workplaces as well.

While losing a photo or video from your home laptop is annoying, losing six months of finance reporting or client records from your work computer is far more concerning.

The latest figures from the Ponemon Institute show the average cost of a data breach in the US is now $6.7m (£4.3m). Clearly this is a cost that no company can afford; so how do you maintain a BYOD environment, yet retain the security and reliability of your data?

Virtualisation

The next logical step in a cloud-based ecosystem, is to take not only files, folders and documents into the cloud, but to move a user's entire workspace there too. I believe, desktop virtualisation is set to become the biggest player in the coming years, with personal hardware acting as a terminal to connect to the cloud-based computing hubs that will dominate our workplace.

Why is desktop virtualisation so important? Think of your current setup, even if you have a BYOD system in place at work, probably with great backup and synchronisation features, a large number of your documents, emails and work-related files probably still reside on your computer. Now imagine that computer is stolen, although the files are all backed up they are still available to the thief to sell or distribute.

Now think of a virtualised desktop. There are a number of different flavours of this, but essentially all you have to do is open the client on your computer, enter your login details and you are instantly connected to a fully functioning, high-powered desktop environment, tailored to your needs and all delivered through your broadband internet connection.

Because nothing is stored locally, security is all but assured, and because of the way virtual OS work, one server can host multiple staff member's desktops – reducing cost to the employer and flexibility to the employee.

BYOD does not suit every industry the military and banking sectors may never adopt a personal device strategy. However, for those forward thinking enough to challenge the norms and try something new the rewards are plentiful.

Jason Currill is founder and CEO of Ospero, a global infrastructure as a service (IaaS) company – follow the company on Twitter @ospero_